Currently, the basic unit for gathering charging information on a communication network is a Call Detail Record (CDR). An individual CDR is generated for every activity on the Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN) involving customer interactions with the service provider's network, and even for some internal administrative activities. Generated CDRs can be transferred to a billing system (BS) via file-based output, using File Transfer Protocol (FTP), or near-real-time output, using GPRS Tunneling Protocol Prime (GTP′).
At the present time, the majority of communications activities can be classed as Human-to-Human (H2H) communication, as they involve a human user making or receiving a voice call or message, sending or receiving a message, or accessing a data network such as an Enterprise network or the Internet. A rapidly emerging area is Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication. In this type of communication, an M2M device can communicate with a server of an M2M service provider via a network, without a human user being involved.
M2M communication can, in some cases, involve a very small amount of data being sent over the network. The frequency with which data is sent can vary widely according to the service, and can occur on a frequent basis, or a very infrequent basis. If the conventional practice of generating CDRs is applied to M2M communication, the size of a CDR could often be larger than the actual use of the network that the CDR is recording and the overall volume of data required to record network usage becomes unnecessarily large.
WO 2011/083065A1 describes handling of M2M services in a communication system and provides global charging information for a plurality of M2M terminals using a same M2M service. An entity creating charging information agglomerates charging information associated with a terminal supporting a M2M service with charging information associated with other terminals supporting the M2M service.
The present invention seeks to provide an alternative way of processing usage information for M2M communication.